Drew Brees, Union Power and the Big Payback

Quarterback/demigod
Drew Brees is the reigning NFL Offensive Player of the Year. He also, for some
curious reason, can’t get a solid contract offer from his team, the New Orleans
Saints. The sports radio talking heads are yipping about whether the
33-year-old Brees is asking for too much. But this story is not about the pay.
It’s the payback.

In
fall 2010, it was Brees who led a procession onto the field in full view of the Sunday
Night Football cameras with one finger in the air, a symbol that both
teams—the Saints and Vikings—were actually one team united against ownership.
The voice of the NFL establishment, Al Michaels, a proud political
conservative, condemned it from the NBC booth, saying—with an eye roll, “There’s nothing like a labor
statement to start the season.” As for the NFL owners, like the
elephant who symbolizes their political affection, they don’t forget. But Brees
proceeded without concern for any kind of payback. After all, he brought a
Super Bowl victory to New Orleans. He was untouchable. As the team’s union
representative and member of the NFLPA executive board, Brees remained
outspoken and was one of the lead plaintiffs in the lockout lawsuits against
the NFL. His former teammate Scott Fujita said to me, “In recent years Drew has
taken some strong positions against league management. He doesn’t have to do
this, but he chooses to because he knows it’s the right thing to do, and
because he’s a natural leader who all players look to and respect. That’s quite
rare for someone of his stature. He has great conviction.”

But
conviction comes with a price, even for—as one union official described him to
me—“the Captain America of quarterbacks.” The NFLPA has now formally requested the league to
investigate whether the Saints are openly trying to punish
Brees for his trade unionism. The union is citing CBA provision, Article 49,
Section 1 which reads, “ No Discrimination: There shall be no
discrimination in any form against any player by the NFL, the Management
Council, any Club or by the NFLPA because of race, religion, national origin,
sexual orientation, or activity or lack of activity on behalf of the NFLPA.”

Brees’s
other apostasy has been to defend current and former teammates Will Smith,
Anthony Hargrove, Jonathan Vilma and Fujita on charges that they were part of a
pay-to-injure program, otherwise known as “bountygate.” Brees is leveraging his
fame to argue that he and his team are being targeted for the crime of being
loud and proud union leaders during last year’s NFL lockout.

Last
week, Brees tweeted, “If NFL
fans were told there were ’weapons of mass destruction‘ enough times, they’d
believe it. But what happens when you don’t find any????”

There
was a media backlash against Brees for invoking the war in Iraq (or the lies
that brought us into the war in Iraq, to be more exact). Brees apologized for
this tweet, but this mini-backlash didn’t slow him down and actually seemed to
embolden him.

On The
Late Show With David Letterman, Brees said, “I mean, just
the whole process itself and the investigation I feel like has been extremely
unfair. Unfortunately, it seems like it’s been more of a media campaign than it
is actually finding the truth to the matter. Put forth the facts, the truth,
and if indeed there was a pay-to-injure scheme, then people will get punished,
and if there’s not, then let’s exonerate these men because, at this point, it
seems like it’s a smear campaign. We’re dragging them through the mud. We’re
ruining their reputations and careers with no true evidence.”

There
are those who will scoff about Brees, the millionaire quarterback, being any
kind of trade union martyr. They are already saying that the NFLPA has no place
in this “negotiation.” The scoffers will have television programs, radio shows
and nationally read columns. They are the creators of conventional wisdom. They
are also wrong.

There
is no higher cultural platform in the country than the National Football
League. NBC’s Sunday Night Football is the highest-rated
program of the fall season. The Super Bowl is the most watched program in the
history of this country. Drew Brees has been one of the faces of this league
since the Saints won the Super Bowl in 2010. If he can be spanked like an
unruly child for the crime of standing with his union, what does that portend
for the public sector worker in Ohio, the Chicago teacher who just voted to go
on strike or the Starbucks barista trying to start a union? I’m not saying that
Drew Brees is some kind of Joe Hill with a tight spiral, but this is about
ensuring that anyone who wants a union or is in a union can speak out in
defense of their livelihood.

The
AFL-CIO, of which the NFLPA is a member, should put out a statement in support
of Brees. They should hold his case up as an example of what NFLPA Executive
Director DeMaurice Smith means when he says, “The minute that
any sports player believes for whatever reason that they are outside the
management-labor paradigm, you lose ground.” This country’s trade union
movement has been in free fall for decades, from a high of 35 percent in the
mid 1950s, to a seventy-year low in 2010 of fewer than 12 percent. If the
message from the NFL is that being an active unionist is grounds for
intimidation and punishment, then the AFL-CIO needs to make it plain: an injury
to one is an injury to all. Even quarterbacks.

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Here
is a post-script that I received after publishing this article, courtesy of
the organization, American Rights at Work.
I think it speaks cleary to why it's important to support Brees, as his case is
a high profile expression of what is happening in workplaces around the
country.

An
analysis of the 1999-2003 data on NLRB election campaigns finds that:

63% of employers interrogate workers in mandatory one-on-one meetings with
their supervisors about support for the union;
54% of employers threaten workers in such meetings;
57% of employers threaten to close the worksite;
47% of employers threaten to cut wages and benefits; and
34% of employers fire workers.

The
employer resistance to workers exercising their legal right to form unions does
not stop after the union election process:
One year after a successful election, 52% of newly formed
unions had no collective bargaining agreement.
Two years after an election, 37% of newly formed unions
still had no labor agreement.